


Beneath the Tomb of Time (The Lonely Storm Remix)

by ishie



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Gen, Remix Redux, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-22 00:06:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1568768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishie/pseuds/ishie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Romana and the Doctor stood side by side on the observation platform, looking up at the construction of the Great Lgnonhian Wheel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beneath the Tomb of Time (The Lonely Storm Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [honeynoir (bracelets)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bracelets/gifts).
  * Inspired by [On the Hour Hand](https://archiveofourown.org/works/447648) by [honeynoir (bracelets)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bracelets/pseuds/honeynoir). 



> Thanks to D for the hand-holding and wine :)

Romana and the Doctor stood side by side on the observation platform, looking up at the construction of the Great Lgnonhian Wheel. Drones whizzed hither and thither, striking sparks that flared brightly at the ends of the methane torches they used to separate centuries-old welds and create new ones. In the darkness between, long-fingered artifickers plucked at the heavy chronodial cords and pulled them in and out of the weave that quivered in the rush of time.

"They seem to be getting on quite well," Romana said at last, when the silence had stretched on between them enough.

"Yes."

"I wonder, do you think they've truly compensated enough for what's to come?"

"As well as they can, I'm sure. See there, the break in the weft under the fourth girder?"

Romana had seen the break, of course, knew it for what it was. She felt compelled to ask the question anyway so that he could show it to her. He had been her teacher of sorts, once. It was hard to break the habit.

Beyond the pane of transparilium, the working of the wheel went busily onward. Hundreds—thousands—of hands and talons and undulating limbs all bent to their tasks, as they had done for millennia. The building of the wheel stretched so far into the past that the only mention Romana had ever found of its inception was a note filed deep within the Bureau of Ancient Records. Some unknown hand had scratched in Middle Gallifreyan nothing but the name of the star system and a hasty sketch of the wheel itself.

Of course, the bulk of the work would never be completed at all. The Great Lgnonhian Wheel was and is and will be a perpetual endeavour, one that was always meant to last until the final collapse of its star, when the forty-seven consorts spill forth from its frozen depths to bear the fertile Lgnonor in her palanquin to where she devours the wheel's heart and births the next age.

But all of that was far in the future along this particular thread of time, so Romana curled her hands around the thin rail and turned to survey the Doctor. His hair was nearly the same as it had been when they first met, though the face was younger and the eyes colder. Hers probably were as well.

"I'm surprised to see you here. Haven't you responsibilities upon responsibilities?"

"Haven't we all?" Romana wasn't surprised to see him, though she'd never have guessed to see him _here_.

"I haven't," he told her. He patted one of the many pockets of his coat as though looking for something.

"Of course you have," she argued out of long habit. "Only you came to it so much later."

He squinted up at the ribbons of exhaust lazily drifting in the wake of a supply skiff. "I suppose I must, if you insist upon it. Though I might say I came to it earlier in that case. I have the advantage of many years on you, but some of us didn't skip off to E-space for centuries."

"It was hardly centuries."

" _With_ my dog, I should add. Terrible thing to do to a fellow, taking his dog and booting him back to N-space with hardly a by-your-leave."

A little of that old irritation came bubbling up, too quickly for her to pretend it didn't. How like him to remake their world in his own self-serving image. "I took nothing. He had to stay and I chose to stay with him," she said, her voice as sharp as the time winds themselves.

The Doctor recoiled as though she had struck him. His face was still and pale even in the red light of the observation platform. "Yes, of course he did. Of course. Romana, forgive me. Let's not fight." He leaned in and whispered, "Not in front of the wheel."

He pressed his folded hands to his chest in entreaty, that once-familiar impish look trying to crowd out the hardness that lined his features. The playfulness she remembered seemed brittle and forced as it never had before. His anger and melancholy had always come on suddenly, fierce and sometimes terrifying to behold, but beneath had always been the air of reckless whimsy that fuelled so much of his traipsing into adventure.

"Not in front of the wheel," she agreed. There would be enough of that later.

"Well, then, that shall hold us until the very end, won't it?" he crowed, smacking a hand down on the rail in triumph. "We'll have cakes with Lgnonor and front-row seats to the new age! Here, hold this," he said as he grabbed her hand and dropped a bundle of string and small stones into it. "Picked that up in Krkv yst. Do you remember? Soft as my dear old bed, and you with that old skeptical face you had then. Did I tell you I saw Princess Astra again? Before all of that key nonsense, quite by accident. We were aiming for that little globular cluster past Epsilon and suddenly there she was. I would have thought it you but of course she looks—looked!—nothing like my mother. Ah! Yes, here we go."

The dust-covered bottle he brandished from deep inside one of those pockets had a small hand-drawn label: a powdery brown thing, well-aged and fragile, with spidery writing creeping along its borders and the outline of a face in the center. There was a faint hiss when he worked the cork free, and a curl of vapor wafted from the opening.

"I haven't any glasses. You don't mind...?"

"Of course not." And she didn't. It was something of a comfort to see him as ill-prepared as ever, humming in pleasure after a swig from the filthy thing, a drop of red liquid staining his lip. He smiled and passed it to her and she drank, hesitantly at first and then with great pleasure as the long-forgotten astringency of fermented Earth fruits filled her mouth.

"Did you meet dear Leonardo? I can't remember. You were there for the forgeries, I recall that part at least."

Romana let him ramble off into his memories, offering some hints and many corrections as he pieced together the tale, and the one after that, and another. There were many places she needed to be. Many important words she needed to hear. The war rushed closer with each beat of her hearts. The lament for the Gallifrey she had raised from its ashes was already building in her bones. But there was time enough, for all of that and all the other things she still must do.

For now there was this tart red wine and those memories. There was the lazy sweep of blue light across the metalwork that grew above them, the faint patterns dancing in the deepest parts of the chronodial weave. And through it all, again: the Doctor, hard-edged and fragile and so familiar at her side.


End file.
